A Russian national who pleaded guilty last year in the United States to money laundering charges was released in exchange for Marc Fogel, the American schoolteacher previously detained in Russia.
Alexander Vinnik, who pleaded guilty after operating a cryptocurrency exchange, will return to Russia, two people familiar with the exchange — who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations — told POLITICO.
Fogel arrived back in the United States and met with President Donald Trump late Tuesday night.
The New York Times first reported Vinnik’s release.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East who helmed negotiations and traveled to Russia to retrieve Fogel, wouldn’t discuss Wednesday whether he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to achieve the deal.
“A few days ago we were approached by someone and we felt that we could get Marc Fogel home, we spoke to the president about it….he gave me instructions and I flew over there and thank God we had a good result,” Witkoff said in an interview on CBS on Wednesday.
In a flurry of interviews with reporters Wednesday, Witkoff provided details about how the United States secured the release of Fogel, who was previously a teacher at an English language school in Moscow. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2022 after being detained for marijuana possession at a Russian airport in 2021. The marijuana was prescribed to him in the United States for medical purposes, and the Biden administration declared him wrongly detained last year.
When initially asked on CNN on Wednesday morning about whether he spoke with Putin to secure Fogel’s release, Witkoff said “I’m not going to talk about that right now.” But when pushed, Witkoff said: “I’m not saying it’s important or it’s not important. I’m just saying it’s just not something that I’m going to talk about right now.”
Trump, speaking to reporters late Tuesday night in the White House Diplomatic Room as he and other administration officials welcomed Fogel home, said only that he saw the exchange as “a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine.”
On Wednesday, Trump spoke by phone with Putin, stating in a Truth Social post that the call was “lengthy and highly productive.”
Witkoff said the team that helped with the deal included White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe — and even Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.
“His Highness in Saudi Arabia had plenty to do with this,” he said in an interview outside the White House on Wednesday. “These are not simple things to achieve.”
